Microsoft word - interviewjini.doc

Up Close & Personal Nicole Paull Interviews Jini Patel Thompson
Nicole Paull: I am Nicole Paull and I am somebody who healed my Crohn’s Disease using Jini
Patel Thompson’s protocols. They just worked wonders for me. A lot of you might know me
from the forum on www.jinipatelthompson.com where I have been the moderator. For anyone
who is not familiar with Jini, she was diagnosed with Crohn’s about 20 years ago. Is that right
Jini Patel Thompson: Yes. That is correct.
Nicole Paull: She started out using the traditional medical protocols and it just was not helping,
so she developed this wonderful system of healing about which you can learn more at her
website: www.listen2yourgut.com For everybody’s reference, if you need any operator
assistance during the call, you can hit *0. If you need to increase your volume you can hit *4
and when I take us out of the lecture mode, if everybody can mute their phones, unless you have
to ask a question. You can do that by hitting *6. I think that is all. Let’s get started.
Jini, I think everybody is just so impressed by the healing protocol that you developed. How did
you do that? What kind of a method of experimentation did you use?
Jini Patel Thompson: I think that the background behind it is that I actually come from a family
filled with doctors and pharmacists. At the time of my diagnosis, I had never even heard of
alternative healing. I thought herbal medicine was something that people in Third World
Countries used because they could not afford the good stuff. I was just so far to that extreme and
any problem, you took a drug, that was normal. That was my whole framework.
When I was taught to look at things, it was through the scientific method. You had to do a
controlled trial and you had to repeat it, otherwise it does not mean anything. If you cannot
replicate something with the same results at least three times in a row, then you cannot say that a
+ b = c because you don’t know until you have reproduced it a sufficient number of times. That
For the first three years after being diagnosed, because of my family’s medical connections, they
got me into the top gastroenterologist in Canada. He was in charge of a national research team
on Crohn’s and colitis. I was really getting the crème de la crème care and I was just getting
worse and worse with every passing month. By the end of the three years I was on 13 pills a
day, just sicker than a dog. The doctors had told me that I had widespread Crohn’s, affecting my
small intestine and large intestine. Also, they were wanting to look at my stomach, as they
suspected it had started to spread to my stomach as well.
They basically said to me, “Look, we are really sorry but you are basically going to spend the
rest of your life in and out of the hospital. You will not be able to have children, you will
probably not be able to hold any kind of a job, but that is okay because you can get disability
insurance.” I don’t blame them and do not hold them as negative because medical people speak
from their knowledge. If I had stayed with the medical system and the medical protocols, there
is no doubt that is the kind of a life that I would have had, because that is all there is.
But, for me, being a very strong minded person, I thought about that and thought that I would
rather die. Because I am not afraid of death. To me, constantly being in and out of the hospital,
the drugs and the continuous pain, for me was a life of torture. It was a choice of whether I
would rather be tortured for the next 40 years, or would I rather die? I would rather just die
because that would be more interesting. Also, there would not be any pain and I wouldn't be
being tortured. I was 17, did not have children of my own and was not in a relationship. If you
are a mother with kids, that is a whole different ball game. I basically said--
Nicole Paull: Although, I have to tell you my reaction was much the same. When I read about
the side effects and what these medicines can do to your body, that was literally my reaction. I
Jini Patel Thompson: So maybe I would have too. You cannot speak until you have been in that
position. As a single person, it was certainly easier for me to really go maverick. What I did
was go to my gastroenterologist– note that this was before the internet and there was no
information available. But he, being in his position, he loaded me up with a stack of textbooks
I took it home and I read everything and I thought, "Oh my god, they know nothing. They are
just throwing darts in the dark, hoping that something sticks." That's what really gave me the
confidence to say, you know what? They have no clue, they do not know what causes it, they do
not know how to cure it. They were just hoping to keep everybody alive. And that is good. But
it's not good enough for me. I thought that, if I had to be a guinea pig, I would rather be my own
At that point, I left the medical profession and weaned off all my drugs. I was supposed to go to
Tokyo. I was being sponsored by The Edmonton Journal newspaper to cover the international
fashion shows because I had a photography business with a friend of mine. My doctors said you
can't go to Japan; you have to have surgery. I said sorry, I’m going, and I just left. And I just
said whatever is going to happen is going to happen. I was thinking I’ll be in Asia and they’ve
got probably some good alternative medicine protocols and I would go and see what is around
there. That’s sort of what kicked it off. I weaned off all the drugs and weaned off of the
prednisone and started my search for what works.
I tried everything including the tiniest little miracle wonder cures, anything you might have
heard from. I would go to Zen monasteries to see what are people taking and what might help. It
was seven years of trial and error and like I said, applying the scientific criteria to my process,
which was that it has to work a minimum of three times under completely different
circumstances. Let a month pass in between, let a couple of weeks pass in between. Because as
all of us know who have gut issues, they are so related to stress. You can't reliably test an herbal
supplement unless you are really accounting for the stress and the circumstances at that moment.
That is really how it all came about. Like I said, anything I heard of, anything I read about, I
tried. What made it to the book was all the stuff that works reliably and consistently.
Nicole Paull: I was thinking that we all benefited from all the experimentation that you did. I
don’t know if I would have done what you did in terms of all of that experimentation. But I am
very glad that you did and I was able to benefit from it.
Jini Patel Thompson: One of my favorite emails I got from a reader was from this father whose
son – I can't remember whether he had Crohn's or colitis. He basically said I know I can't go so
far as to say I’m glad you got this disease in the first place. But really, I am, because if you
hadn’t, who would have come up with this stuff. I sort of thought well yeah, I can see that, I can
Nicole Paull: What happened initially when you weaned off all those drugs, because you didn’t
have your protocols all there to kind of help?
Jini Patel Thompson: Like anything, it was a lot of up and down. It was really interesting,
because death was my end point and I wasn’t scared of it. The other thing that was able to
happen was that I pushed the boundaries about as far as you could push them.
I get emails from people and they're panicked because they're having some blood mixed in with
their stool, and I’m like “Honey, I have filled toilet bowls with blood. Do you know how much
you can hemorrhage before you're going to die!” {laughing} People get so scared because the
doctors and everybody freak them out about it. When you don’t have that fear and you're like
look, if I die trying – I die trying. And you really see wow, where the limits to the human body
really are. It’s kind of a different thing.
That’s actually what led me to develop the IBD Remission Diet; it was being in the state of
extreme hemorrhage. I had to go in and have 6 pints of blood transfused. I refused even then to
let them give me any drugs. I was lucky because I was here in Vancouver where the doctors are
very aware of patient rights and the authority over their own body. They weren’t beating me
trying to get drugs into me or anything. That continual quest that you know what; there has got
to be a way. Actually, I don’t think I had a conviction that there was a way, but it was more that
there has to be a way, or I’ll die trying.
Nicole Paull: Right. When do you feel, in the course of all of your experimentation, that you
really turned the corner, I guess? Because I know for myself and something I tell my
consultation clients is what you're looking to see is not, you're sick and then all of a sudden
you're well. It's that you have ups and downs, but the ups and downs get less and less extreme
until you're kind of balanced and you're just well.
Jini Patel Thompson: That’s true if you're using my protocols. Right? Because they do provide
you with that gradually spiraling upwards journey to health. But for my journey, I didn’t have
those protocols. I didn’t have any steady progression of one step back, two steps forward. I had
five steps back, one step forward, or three steps forward, one step back. Mine was all over the
place, depending on what I was testing and what I was discovering at the time.
The other thing was like when you talk about what were some of the milestones, that’s where
then the whole emotional/spiritual aspect also comes into it. There was one time – and I guess
this would have been about two years after I left the medical protocols, and I was back home at
my parents house in Edmonton, visiting. They didn’t know I was coming, so they had booked a
Christmas holiday. They all left the house. This is the mind-body interplay. Literally, the
minute they left the house, I started bleeding. They were gone and I was completely on my own.
I was hemorrhaging and filling about four toilet bowls full of blood a day. I had mouth ulcers all
over my mouth, down my esophagus. I couldn’t eat anything, other than water, and I was in
continual pain, so I couldn’t sleep. Basically by day 2, I lay down and I said you know, I’m
ready to die. I’ve had a good life, I've done enough and I’m really ready to go. I was close
enough to death that I could have made that decision and all the rest of it. God says to me, “No,
it’s not your time.” I’m lying there and I’m like “What do you mean it’s not my time? That’s my
choice. I’m going to choose to die."
At that point, I was coming out of the Christian church but it was still my dominant belief
system. So I was believing that there was heaven and there was hell and I’d die and I’m going to
heaven, and that’s it, I’m done with all this torture. I said, well, okay, I’ll go down to the
kitchen, I’ll get a knife and I’ll slit my wrists.”
Jini Patel Thompson: Yeah, I’m having this conversation. God says “Well, you still won’t die
because it’s not your time.” I said “Fine, I’ll go, I’ll get a gun, and I’ll blow my head off and
then I’ll really be dead.” And God says to me, “And I’ll send you right back down.” I was like,
what do you mean, send me back – no! There is heaven, there is hell, there is no coming back
again! I was like, what's going on here?!
I digested that for a bit, that I could be sent back for another lifetime. And then everything
within me just welled up and I said "Well, if I have to live, then give me a life because I cannot
What I didn’t realize and interestingly, the books that I read immediately after that spiritual
experience were all about how people with chronic illness – some of them actually have a
subconscious or an underlying wish to die. But mostly, it’s not that you want to die, it’s that you
haven't chosen life. That was me. I was like I’ll live, I’ll die, whatever. It didn’t really matter.
That’s what came out of it. And me saying 'give me a life'. And then the books was my first big
transition into I have to choose to be here and I have to want to be here. And I have to
completely shift my energy and my intention in that direction.
That was one of the big shifts for me, the big step up towards health and healing. After that
exchange with God and I said give me a life, I went to sleep for the first time with no pain and I
slept for 12 hours solid and I woke up in the morning. At that time, I had known of Elaine
Gottschall’s "Specific Carbohydrate Diet", but I hadn’t tried it. I woke up in the morning and I
said I’m ready and I’m going to do her diet. That provided me with the next couple of steps up.
I just started healing from that point on, for the next three or four months. Then the diet no
longer worked for me. But that got me out of the place of danger and the place of extreme ill
Nicole Paull: That’s interesting. You bring up the point about it’s almost like if you're going to
live, you have to have something to live for. That’s so true.
Jini Patel Thompson: Not just to say, well whatever, but to have a really clear directive I choose
life, I want to live and I’m going to make it good for myself.
Nicole Paull: In the course of time since you published your book, you’ve done many
consultations for people and of course, you’ve been active on the forum; what are the most
common mistakes that you see people make, either in their thinking or in actual action?
Jini Patel Thompson: There are a few. First of all, people are simultaneously taking either drugs
or herbal supplements that are causing the exact same symptoms they're trying to get rid off.
Asacol is one that comes to mind. Asacol very commonly causes bloody diarrhea. People are
implementing all these healing protocols, and Asacol is the last one that they wean off and they
get really frustrated – “why am I still having some blood?” Get off of the Asacol and see what
happens. And then very often that’s where they need to go to actually achieve the healing that
The other thing that’s very common is that they're taking herbal supplements. I've heard from a
number of people who they’ve tried everything, they just can't get the diarrhea stopped. During
the consultation, I will ask for the actual brand names, write out everything that’s written on the
side of the bottle, and when I go through it, they're taking anywhere from two to six substances
that cause diarrhea. You say okay, you have to get off all of those.
That’s why I've tried to really stress in the book that when you're going on this natural healing
protocol, stick with the ones in the book because they are extensively tested… and that’s the
other reason I give brand names, because different companies make up different formulas and
then all of a sudden they're going to throw in some MSM because it’s supposed to be good for
the gut. For normal people it is, and for people with IBD and IBS, it’s a nightmare. That’s the
other main mistake that I see people making.
Another big error is because our whole thinking and our whole mindset has been basically set up
for us by the medical – because that’s our dominant system of healthcare here – people really
feel… like we’re conditioned to get the same results. We want to pop a pill and it goes away.
We want to take the herbal supplements and it goes away. We’re conditioned to expect the same
results, not understanding that the pharmaceutical drugs suppress a symptom; they do not heal
anything. So it’s very easy to, you know, if the oil light is blinking on your car, take a hammer
and smash the oil light. Okay, the oil light is not blinking. Great! Problem solved! Well no.
We haven’t gotten to the oil underneath the hood. So it’s the same thing with natural medicine.
And what people have a really hard time getting their head around is that the healing has to take
place in layers. The symptom is the final – it’s like the icing on the cake, or the roof on the
house. But underneath that, we have to heal the foundation, we've got to heal the walls, until
finally you’ll see that the roof is good – for want of a better analogy.
So that’s the other thing is to expect the same type of results and process from natural medicine
And then the other big one that kind of ties in with that, I guess, is the fear. I talked before about
people see what, to me, is a very small amount of blood and they're like it’s not working!
Nothing is working! I better go back on the drugs! I’m in trouble! And just that whole
impatience of you know what - are you dying? No. Great! And just the whole impatience with
I had one consultation client, she was on three different drugs and severely malnourished. She
does the IBD Remission Diet and she does a number of the other protocols. She gets herself to
the place where she is off all of her drugs, she has no pain, she has no bleeding. This is huge.
She is approaching at least a decent weight, and she gets the erythema nodosum – the little
painful nodules on the skin, and she goes back on prednisone! I was like “Doh! What are you
Nicole Paull: You made so much progress!
Jini Patel Thompson: She made so much progress and she got what, to me, was a very minor
symptom. If you look at it from the paradigm of holistic healing which is that symptoms are
messages, her body was saying to her okay, you’ve done really great, but we still have some
imbalances here. Perhaps she needed to do the Wild Oregano Oil protocol and clear out some of
the pathogenic microorganisms in her system. She needed to go on the high dose probiotics.
And all of that would have been taken care of. Now you see, if the body doesn’t give us a
symptom and we feel great, we stop with the healing protocols, we stop with the supplements,
because we’re like, oh we’re good. Right? So the body has to keep giving us symptoms until
we really are good, until we really are done. People have a hard time getting their head around
Normally what it takes for some people is they need to make a couple of passes at it. They will
wean off the drugs the first time and then something will panic them and throw them back on it
and then they get a little time and distance from it and then they go, okay, I’m going to try again.
This time they can get a little bit further. And that’s okay. It’s all good. Because the principle
negative effect on these diseases is stress and fear. So if you need to take a drug to keep you
from being in a position of complete fear and stress, then that’s actually a positive thing, because
the fear and stress will damage you more, I believe, that a lot of the drugs will. That’s why I
keep saying it’s your journey, it’s so personal, you have to listen to your own body. You have to
proceed at the pace that’s right for you. Those, I guess, would be the main saboteurs that people
Nicole Paull: What you were just saying in terms of it’s just so important to listen to your own
body’s feedback and let that be the final say in what you're going to do at each step along the
way, actually brings to mind one of the questions that has been sent in by the webcast. This
person wrote in that her husband has very severe Crohn’s, and she says he really wants a more
definite program of what to expect and how long. For instance, what should happen during week
one, week two. He says he was educated as an engineer and he just has trouble with being told
to use his intuition. What would you say to somebody like that?
Jini Patel Thompson: It’s very difficult, because let’s say I were to give him – and I could – I
could give people a five-step plan. Because what I've noticed from my consultations is that
people are tending to need the same things with just slight variations that most of the people will
see good results from. But again, in terms of a timeline, he is saying week one and week two.
So let’s say he has 50 bazillion pathogenic microorganisms in his system and you have only
100,000. Are you going to need the same amount of time on the Wild Oregano Oil protocol?
Jini Patel Thompson: And also, let’s say you just have Candida, but he’s got mycobacterium
which have that dormant/active lifecycle. So you have to redo the protocol every four months to
kill the ones that are now becoming active. How can I possibly say, do it for one week and see
this, because I have no idea what his bioterrain looks like.
So what he would need, is he would need a clinic run by a doctor who is trained in my protocols,
who could do all the testing and then put him on an individualized program. Who knows, maybe
some day that person will be there. But in the meantime, I mean it’s certainly not going to be me
because I’m not a health professional and I’m not trained in that. And that’s not my thing
Nicole Paull: I think you kind of, might have actually already touched on another question I had
in mind. When people are doing everything right, they're following the healing diets, which ever
one is appropriate for their system, and they're taking the appropriate supplements and they're not
taking any out-of-the-book supplements, and they are doing EFT, and they still just seem to be in
this holding pattern of illness; what would you say?
Jini Patel Thompson: I would say you just have to have faith and keep going. That doesn’t
mean you necessarily keep doing just the same things you're doing. Let’s just take the EFT.
Normally, if you're doing all of the physical things and you're still not progressing, you’ve got to
look at the emotional, mental and spiritual. That’s where your healing is being arrested. You
may say I am doing EFT, but maybe you're not doing enough, or maybe you need two years of
EFT to clear, because you’ve got so much stuff. It really depends on how mucked-up and
traumatic your childhood was, what are your daily patterns for moving through your life, are
they healthy patterns? Are they stress-producing, illness-inducing patterns? Those can't be
changed in a couple of weeks or couple of months even. You may also need – you could say
well I’m doing the EFT and I’m doing that and nothing is working. Well then try craniosacral,
then try hypnosis. You have to just keep going, because different people will respond to
different things. You either make the commitment to it, or you don’t. And so from my point of
view, if you don’t and you go back to the medical, where are you going to be? If that’s okay for
you, then go back to it, because it is certainly easier. Right?
Jini Patel Thompson: But if you don’t like that, where you're going to be and like for me, I just
detest hospitals and that whole environment and the invasiveness to the body. I’d rather do just
about anything than be back in that. So for me, and for other people who have made a
commitment to natural healing, it’s like you just keep going. Again, we come into the specificity
and the individuality of the healing journey, because hypnosis may work for you, EFT may work
for me. For a third person, I need hypnosis, EFT and craniosacral, and I need it for like five
years. I mean we don’t know. Seriously. We can't know until -- we just have to put one foot in
front of the other and just get through each day as it comes.
Nicole Paull: Now, as far as making that commitment and really just moving forward, it actually
reminds me of a couple other emails or comments on the forum that we've had where people will
start on the Wild Oregano Protocol and they're already in a bad way, or they're trying to wean off
drugs, or whatever. They feel like the wild oregano oil is actually aggravating their symptoms.
Jini Patel Thompson: First of all, there is always the possibility that your body is not tolerating a
substance or it’s not tolerating it at that time because you’ve got too many things going in. The
body can get overwhelmed. So that is always a possibility.
Another possibility is that you need to – it’s the timing of it. Let’s say you're still on a drug and
you're still on this and it’s just too much for your liver. It’s not that the wild oregano oil is the
problem, it’s probably the Prednisone or the Imuran that’s your real problem. The wild oregano
is just sort of the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back
The third thing is with all these substances is again, they're not suppressing a symptom; they are
healing a root cause. You’ll get this with both the wild oregano and the probiotics. People will
say I don’t tolerate it. No, what's happening is you're getting the Herxheimer reaction. You are
getting the die-off of pathogens. Now when these pathogens - bad bacteria, bad viruses,
parasites are killed off in your gut, they release toxins upon their death. And those toxins – guess
what? – make you feel sick. So you may think that this is not helping you, but actually it is.
Again, it’s just that part of the natural healing, the foundational process.
I understand. Having been through it myself, repeatedly, I understand how incredibly annoying
and frustrating that is. Because how are you to know whether this is not good for you or whether
it is good for you - because it feels the same either way. It’s like okay, I’m either intolerant or
I’m having a Herxheimer – go figure. It’s so annoying, it’s so frustrating. That’s why it’s the
time is your only indicator of that. Also, I mean it’s different again, for the readers of my books
than it was for me, because for me, there was nobody else. There was no one else who tried this
stuff. There was no one else; it was just me. So I was really feeling my way around in the dark.
For people who are reading the book – there has been thousands of people who these protocols
have worked for, either to get them to the point where they're off drugs and they can manage
their symptoms, or right the way through to a complete healing and a cure. That’s one thing that
you can have in your head: Okay, these protocols and these substances do work. Maybe for me,
it’s just taking a bit longer. Maybe I am really toxic in my gut. I have a crate load of pathogens
in there and so I've got to just go really small and take a long time to kill them all, otherwise, or
put up with being really ill. Those are sort of your two choices; and depending on your
personality, one or the other will appeal to you. I know a lot of people who have just said like, “I
lost 10 pounds, I was sicker than a dog, and then boom! I felt great.” They're the type of people
who are willing to go through a severe Herxheimer reaction and clear it fast. For what most
people, I think, is to just – even if you just take one drop of wild oregano oil a day, that’s going
to have a positive effect. Likewise, with the probiotics.
Jini Patel Thompson: Yeah, exactly. And you start with that, and then as it starts killing those
pathogens and then, of course, hopefully you're also taking even just an eighth of a teaspoon of
the probiotics; those two together are going to be the start of changing your gut flora to be a
positive healthy environment. You just have to keep going and gradually increase as you can.
Nicole Paull: For somebody who wanted to start taking the wild oregano – start your protocol,
it’s not necessarily necessary that they start out with being on one teaspoon of each of the
probiotics. They can build up with just a little bit of oregano and a little bit of probiotics until
Jini Patel Thompson: Yes. Definitely. And like I said, even if all you can tolerate is one drop a
day or one drop every three days, it doesn’t matter; just start building that into your body. Start
down the path. You have to heal and clear the foundation before you can get anything lasting or
Nicole Paull: Another question that somebody wrote in on the webcast is she was wondering
whether wild oregano could be taken at the same time as aloe and MusocaHeal?
Jini Patel Thompson: Yes. It’s only the probiotics that you have to be careful with because the
aloe vera contains some antibacterials and of course, the wild oregano is a very potent
antibacterial. So you need to take them away from the probiotics. Here is the other thing most
people don’t keep in their mind about wild oregano – it’s in the book, but it’s not really
emphasized – is that wild oregano oil is an anti-inflammatory. A lot of people, because it has a
burning sensation in your mouth, you think oh it’s abrasive, it’s acidic, it’s burning. No. It’s
anti-inflammatory and believe it or not, they use it with burn victims.
Jini Patel Thompson: Yeah. Again, here we get into the body/mind interplay. If you're taking
this stuff and you're feeling in your mind “oh, this is so caustic, it’s so abrasive, it’s burning my
mucous membranes,” what do you think your body is going to react to? Whereas if you take it
and you go this is just one of those wonder herbs that, it presents like this, but it’s actually anti-
inflammatory and they use it for burn victims, oh, all of a sudden your gut is going to feel a
Nicole Paull: It totally makes sense. One other question was actually about probiotics. One
person wrote in wondering if you have any updated opinions on the safety of soil-based
Jini Patel Thompson: No, I still haven't seen any research indicating … first of all, there are no
trials done on human beings of any length of duration. There is nothing that follows for 5 years,
10 years, 15, 20 years. The main problem with those soil organisms is that they form spores.
We don’t know what happens to those spores in the gut. We don’t know what they do to the gut
terrain. All we know is it’s incredibly difficult to kill them. They’ve tried commercial-grade
disinfectants and sterilants. They’ve tried heat higher than the temperature on the surface of
Mars. Nothing kills these suckers. So that’s the concern about them.
Personally, I think wild oregano oil is your best choice, your best chance at killing them. But
again, there is no studies. People say farmers pull a carrot out in the field and they eat it. Well
you know, I grew up on a farm and we always brushed the carrots off. Nobody eats the carrot
with the dirt clinging to it. And then they say traditional people bury their meat in the ground
and fermented it. Well, I come from the traditional people and I've been to many countries where
there are traditional people, and I have never seen someone put a raw piece of meat straight into
the ground where it gets covered in dirt. They wrap it in ti leaves and banana leaves. It’s
wrapped in something. So yeah, it will get a certain amount of bacteria, but it certainly is not
getting any where near the kind of dosage as you taking a supplement containing billions of these
Even the logic which, you know, we go oh yeah, but when you really look at it and you really
think of it, you're like that’s crazy, that doesn’t make sense. So I would still have to say – I’m
not saying they're good or they're bad, I’m just saying they're completely untested and they're
Nicole Paull: So if you're going to take them, know that you're conducting your own
Jini Patel Thompson: You are doing a Russian roulette thing. You're doing a complete trial
and error, and it may be a good one and it may be a bad one. That’s my only beef with the
industry is they should just let people know that this is highly experimental and that there are
hundreds of research papers showing how these organisms actually cause rampant infection in
the body. So that’s the flipside of it.
If you go and you try to find a research paper showing that acidophilus or bifidobacterium causes
infection and has killed people, you can't find anything. Those are food-based probiotics that
humans have used for thousands of years. They don’t kill anybody, they don’t cause infection.
But you go and look up Bacillus cereus, licheniformis, any of the – most of the top strains of
species of the soil organisms and you will find hundreds of research papers from all over the
world showing that they cause serious infection and death. That’s the flipside of it.
I've actually posted that on my blog along with all the research. If you go to
www.listen2yourgut.com and click on the link to the blog, I’ve put a log of those research links
up on there so people can go read them themselves now.
Nicole Paull: I know one other thing that in talking with people is sometimes just a real
challenge. I went through it myself and made the choice to invest in my health because I wanted
to get better and I wanted to do it without resorting to pharmaceuticals. But sometimes it is a
financial challenge because people who want to pursue natural healing have to pay for almost
Nicle Paull: Do you think we’ll ever see a time when insurance companies will give some
support for stuff like that? The only reason I even ask that is because I’m remembering
chiropractic stuff that for ages and ages, they wouldn’t cover, and now they almost all do.
Jini Patel Thompson: It’s the age-old question and to get the answer, you have to follow the
money. As consumers, our only power is in our wallet. So based on what we spend our money
on, and what we’re willing to spend money on, will constitute policy. If everybody says I’m not
paying for medical insurance anymore, guess what those insurance companies are going to do?
They're going to offer alternative insurance, because they want to sell insurance policies. But as
long as everybody is buying medical insurance and everybody is using medical doctors and
going to the hospitals, you know nothing is going to change.
Jini Patel Thompson: Exactly. They follow the money. And then, of course, the flipside of that
is if you get an organization, like the chiropractic organization gets strong enough to start
lobbying, that’s when you’ll see shift happen. But again, chiropractors can make a decent living
from what they're doing, so it’s financially worth it for them to lobby.
If you look at natural supplement sales, we’re talking low profit products and there is no
cohesive body currently, because everybody is in competition with each other. All the
supplement companies are not working together; they're working against each other or trying to
outsell each other. It is really just a complete financial picture, as far as I am concerned. Or, of
course, you always have, if the people will rise up and they’ll start doing whatever they need to
do – petitioning, picketing, lobbying, all the rest of it. But it’s pretty hard because the people
who feel most strongly about it are the sick people who don’t have the energy to go launch a
national campaign – they can't even get out of bed.
Nicole Paull: Maybe we can open up the phone lines for our listeners questions? I actually have
taken us out of lecture mode. Would anybody like to ask Jini a question?
Debbie: I have a couple of questions. My name is Debbie, I’m from Pittsburgh. I've been
following your book and your protocols probably for a little over two years. I had Crohn's since
I was 15, I’m now 50. I've had a couple of surgeries, the most recent was after I had put myself
on your protocol for seven months I followed it, and I got good results. I was taking no
medications. But I think what it was it was scar tissue that had built up so badly from prior
surgery, that’s where the blockage was again. So I finally decided that surgery was the only
option at that point. I didn’t lose too much; I only lost 4 inches for that, but I’m still off of all
medications and my doctors, I’ve given them all your books and I said please read these. He has
been very cooperative. My one question though is they still push for those maintenance
colonoscopies. I keep putting him off. And I believe in your book you're not a fan of those. In
other words, if nothing is wrong, if I’m currently feeling alright, would you still put off, sort of
what I would consider a maintenance colonoscopy?
Jini Patel Thompson: I understandably cannot tell you what to do. All I can tell you is what I do
for myself which is I have never had another colonoscopy in the 20 years since I was diagnosed.
My reasons for that are (#1) I find it very invasive and traumatic, I find it psychologically very
damaging, and just the whole psychological/mental aspect of it really puts me back to a place I
don’t ever want to or need to go back into. The second thing is that it completely destroys
whatever beneficial flora you’ve built up in your colon. If you do have one done, you’ve got to
go really heavy, probably do the probiotic layering where you're taking both the powders and the
capsules to build your flora back up. You would probably want to follow it also with some
MusocaHeal and some aloe vera juice to heal, because it abrades the lining of your intestine,
that instrument. It can perforate right through the intestine. So there are those risks as well.
And then the biggest risk that I write about in Chapter Five of Listen to Your Gut is that they
cannot sterilize a colonoscope. It is impossible. I provide in the appendix, I provide all of the
research that backs up that assertion, and it comes from medical journals. It comes from the
Journal of Infectious – I can't remember what the name of it is, but it’s all in there. They're all
mainstream medical publications where the medical profession is testing and policing itself and
they're saying (#1) none of our sterilants work against things like mycobacterium, (#2), the staff
error – they had someone in this one hospital that did a lot of colonoscopies, and they found out
that for a period of two months nobody cleaned the colonoscope. It was used daily with I don’t
know how many patients. Because they thought somebody else was doing it and the other
person thought the other person was doing it. So there is staff error that comes into play.
So in my opinion, for maintenance, you want to risk contracting somebody else’s hepatitis, their
AIDS, their cancer? – because you know there is now a good basis for certain cancers being viral
– do you want to contract mycobacterium after you’ve just spent two years getting rid of it from
your body? For me, that’s not an acceptable risk. And the amazing thing about that research is
that probably all medical doctors and a lot of gastroenterologists are not aware of that. They
have no idea that those scopes cannot be properly sterilized.
So your only alternative for that is there is a company called Stryker, and they have now just
developed a colonoscope that comes with a disposable sheath, so it’s like a condom. And that is
your only way you can get one of those done without risking disease transmission. But again,
colonoscopes are very expensive pieces of equipment, and until consumers, like you and
everybody else, starts insisting that your doctor buys one from this medical supply company and
uses it, they're not going to be available – and I even contacted them. I said listen, I’ve got all
these readers and we’re willing to spend on our own health, is there a way we could just buy the
sheath and the doctor could put it over the colonoscope that he currently has? Well, apparently
no. It only fits and it’s only compatible with the colonoscope that they sell as well. But I believe
So you can say that to your GI. You can say …
Jini Patel Thompson: Yeah. Exactly. You buy this and this is the disposable sheath, and I'll
have a colonoscopy. You can photocopy the research from the back of the book (the appendix)
and take it into him because I’ll bet you 10:1 he has no idea. That’s the really frightening thing
about it. I mean there is just so much information that really these people – especially if they
graduated 20 years ago and their whole day is spent treating patients, they can't be expected to
know everything either. So that’s where we have to really advocate on our own behalf and do
Debbie: I’m still following the Natren probiotic protocol, and I’m taking two full doses a day of
the powder, all three. Is there any reason – I don’t feel like that I need to quit, I don’t feel that
maybe I’m ready to quit it. It certainly isn't a bother for me to take it, so I've just continued. Can
Jini Patel Thompson: No. You never can. Because the food-based probiotics are what's called
transient species. You eat them, they live for awhile, they die, you excrete them. You have to
continually be taking them in. Traditionally, people have always ate cultured and fermented
food. We've yogurt made from scratch (kefir), fermented vegetables, fermented fish. But
nowadays in our modern diets, we don’t get any of that. And anything store bought, any of the
store bought yogurts, they're useless from a therapeutic value point of view. If you started
culturing your own foods, like you made your own yogurt using – I like the Natren yogurt
starter, it’s excellent – and you were fermenting vegetables for your own intake and maybe doing
some fermented miso or fermented fish or something, then you could probably stop taking a
probiotic supplement and still be getting enough good bacteria.
Now Debbie, one more thing I wanted to raise with you. When you had the surgery for your scar
tissue because you had the blockage, from past trauma, if that ever happens again, you ever go
into that, what you can do is you just go back on the IBD Remission diet until that blockage
clears. Because it’s liquid, it will clear it – 90 or 99% chance it will clear it. And then you go
for craniosacral therapy. Because what craniosacral does is it breaks up and causes the body – it
actually changes the appearance and texture of scar tissue. So whereas before you have scar
tissue that’s absolutely rigid, it can become flexible and stretchy and then you have no more
Debbie: I did try that early on, right before the surgery, and although I do feel that it helped, you
know, I just felt – I can't really say how it worked. And after seven months, I finally –
something inside me says you know what, you’ve got to do the surgery and then you keep up
I want to say this too, after the surgery, I’ve had probably two or three episodes of the similar
pain and I thought oh my god, I’m blocked again. And that’s happened as I’ve relaxed my diet
and added more what I call roughage or more salads. That’s when I would feel it. I would
immediately stop eating, mainly because I was vomiting – I could vomit the food up as it were, if
it was clogging. I physically felt like okay, it’s clogging. I stopped eating, I would go
completely on your Absorb Plus again. I would take anywhere from two to three days and by the
third day, I was much better. Everything felt back to normal. I was slowly then following your
diet, add easily digested food and just kind of bring everything back again. And that’s helped for
the two or three times in the last two years that it’s happened. Again, maybe I will take your
advice here about the craniosacral at this point if that happens again.
Jini Patel Thompson: Even just do it on a maintenance basis. Even just start going once a week
or once every 10 days and get them to the point where they are saying, “Yeah, okay, your whole
abdomen is really fluid now,” and then maybe you go to a maintenance of one appointment a
month. That might work really well for you as well.
Debbie: That was a very unique session. I had never tried it before, it is quite different.
Jini Patel Thompson: It is a very powerful therapy.
Debbie: It really was. It took me awhile to find somebody in this area. I appreciate it.
Nicole Paull: Anybody else with a question for Jini?
Joyce: This is Joyce. I just wanted to mention, Debbie was talking about blockages from scar
tissue, and I’m wondering if you’ve had any experience using castor oil packs, which I have
Jini Patel Thompson: Actually, yes, you're right. That is another thing that has a very solid
history of being beneficial. It soaks right in through the skin and definitely many people find it
works – and not just for the scar tissue, but anywhere the tissue is restricted or spasming or
Joyce: I actually used a combination – this has been back a few years ago, of homeopathy and
castor oil packs, that literally by the time I went back to my gastroenterologist a year later, a very
large blockage I had in the sigmoid area from scar tissue, he couldn’t believe. He just kept
feeling for it and feeling for it and he said whatever you're doing, keep doing it. So it was a
Jini Patel Thompson: Thank you for bringing that up because you're right, that is a very
Jini Patel Thompson: No, it’s not. But castor oil packs, if you just go on the Internet and you
type that in, you’ll be able to find directions on how to do it. Joyce, I don’t know what you did,
but when I've done it, you put some Saran wrap or something over the top – you take a piece of
flannel or some natural fabric that’s really absorbent, you soak it in the castor oil. You put it on
your abdomen, or your lower back, or wherever you’ve got the problem, cover it with some
saran wrap or something that will prevent it from leaking, and then you then put a hot water
bottle or something on top of that so it heats it up. Joyce, is that similar to what you did?
Joyce: Yes, very much so. It can be a little bit messy, so you probably want to put it all
underneath yourself and definitely the saran wrap helps. And you know, I have to admit there
are times even now if I feel I’m getting a little bit of a blockage, sometimes I don’t even take the
time to do the heating pad and all that or the hot water bottle, I just rub it on and use it as a
massage. And I find that if I do that three or four nights in a row and it’s okay, that spot has
Joyce: It definitely softens the tissue.
Nicole Paull: Another question that came in from the webcast was from a mother whose
daughter has Crohn’s. She was saying that she feels her daughter might not have had severe
enough symptoms at this point to really commit to everything she’ll need to do to handle her
Crohn’s naturally. She wondered if you have any helpful tips for following the healing diets and
at the same time, dealing with school lunches and social occasions?
Jini Patel Thompson: Kids are always my most difficult consultation clients because as a
mother, I do understand that for an adult you can say to them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and they’ll do it. For
kids, they’ll do 1 and 2, but they're not doing 3, and they’ll only sometimes do 4 and they're
never gonna do 5. I guess as the mother, you’ve got to have a lot of patience. You’ve got to just
keep putting stuff before her and keep educating her. But you can’t force them because (#1) it
will cause a lot of stress, which will counteract what you are doing and (#2), part of her healing
journey has got to be to connect with her body and learn to follow her body wisdom.
My advice to people is to give them the protocol to follow, but within that framework to spend a
lot of time educating and encouraging them and teaching them to listen to their own body and
giving them the authority to do that. And recognizing that you know what, even though she is a
child, she may have to hit ground zero before she is willing to invoke the self discipline
necessary to follow these and to allow her to do that. But to point out to her the consequences of
her choices along the way, so that she sees the cause and effect of what she is doing. That’s what
I find kids are really good at. If you say “you see, you had three pieces of cake last night and
today, you’ve got a runny nose because sugar depresses your immune system. One teaspoon of
sugar depresses your immune system for 8 hours.” And the child goes, oh you're right. And
then what happens is the next time they just have one piece of cake. So it is a learning process
for them and you have to continually be educating them and linking up the dots for them
between the cause and effect and otherwise, just do your best. Because you can't force anybody
Nicole Paull: Anybody else with a question for Jini?
Female: I am just starting out with Crohn’s, as I was diagnosed a year ago. I’m on the Imuran.
Can I start the probiotics while I’m still on the Imuran?
Jini Patel Thompson: You can. You can start everything while you're still on the Imuran. The
only caveat to that is if you read the section on drugs, you’ll see that your results are not going to
be the same as if you were doing the protocols and not taking the drugs, especially something
like Imuran, which basically destroys, takes out your immune system. The whole part of the
natural healing program is to heal and balance your immune system.
So you can (and a lot of people do) stay on the drugs until they get comfortable and fluent with
the natural healing protocols and then they gradually start to wean off the drugs when they are
feeling more confident and everything is not so strange and it doesn’t cause them so much
anxiety. You can do it that way. It will take you longer to see results. For many facets of your
healing, you won’t see results until you wean off the drugs, because the drugs are simultaneously
damaging what we are trying to heal. Those are basically your choices. But again, with any
drugs, especially strong ones like Imuran, never stop cold-turkey, always wean off them slowly.
Female: I read something that someone had written into you saying that the insurance company
and the doctors were complaining about it, they had gotten off their Imuran and their drugs.
Does the insurance company usually give people a lot of hassles on that, that they want them to
Jini Patel Thompson: I actually don’t know about that, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Again, it
all comes down to money. If you're spending money, they're making money. I know some
people have been able to get some of their healthcare costs covered by either getting it deducted
from their income tax or getting their insurance company to pay for it. But again, it completely
depends on the policy you’ve got and how hard you fight for it and all those types of things.
Nicole Paull: Anybody else with a question?
Debbie: Jini, this is Debbie one more time, if nobody else has a question. I still use your
MuscosaHeal. I’m two years still using it, and I still think it helps. Any problems with using
Jini Patel Thompson: No. None that have been listed or registered anywhere. A lot of this
stuff, especially for someone like you, you’ve had this since you were 15. This is a long time.
You’ve had a disease 30-40 years and there is a ton of damage there that needs to be healed. So,
don’t be afraid about staying on it. The only things that you don’t want to stay on continually are
the really strong substances, like the wild oregano. You need to cycle on and off of that. The
immune system herbs, like the astragalus, the maitake mushroom – again, you cycle on and off.
But anything that is soothing and healing and the probiotics, for someone like you, you may need
to just stay on all that stuff for the rest of your life to ensure yourself a good quality of life.
Debbie: Yes, that’s what it feels like to me as well. I appreciate that. I’m sure glad I stumbled
on your information a couple of years ago.
Nicole Paull: If anyone else has another question, go ahead. Otherwise, we can maybe wrap it
Joyce: This is Joyce again. I was hesitating to ask this, but I will go ahead. I didn’t find
anything in your book on the subject of vaginal fistulas. I have one that becomes quiescent and
then if I start to have a little flare then that can become active. I just have been uncertain what to
do for that. I don’t typically take herbs because I am on Coumadin for clotting disorder.
Jini Patel Thompson: The treatment protocol for vaginal fistulas would be the same as for
fistulas that are perianal. Some people even have fistulas coming out of their tailbone. They
burrow through the bone and come out there. The treatment is the same with the syringing the
wild oregano and trying to heal. Basically, you’ve got to heal the infection in that place.
Possibly for vaginal, if it’s difficult to get a syringe to the exact site, maybe just a form of a
douche might work well. But again, dilute it proportionately. That’s in the book, I believe for
vaginal things, 10:1 or even 7:1 might be okay, dilute it with olive oil. I don’t know if you can
use that – I’m sure you can use that topically even though you're on the Coumadin, but maybe
Joyce: That’s what I was wondering, because you're not taking it digestively.
Jini Patel Thompson: Yeah, it’s just going topically, and it’s going straight to the site of the
infection. So I can't see that it would be a problem.
Joyce: Okay, so I’ll check on that, thank you.
Nicole Paull: Anybody else have a question?
Female: After your teleseminar, are you going to also provide them in a PDF format, in addition
Jini Patel Thompson: Yes, they are provided as both the MP3 audio and the PDF written
transcript. If you’re a JPT Wellness Gold member you get sent both. Otherwise, if you're not a
member, you can get either the audio or the transcript. The audio is provided for free right after
the call, if you go to the same web page, there is a button where you can download it or you can
Female: Can you drink too many elemental shakes [Absorb Plus] in a day. In other words, if
you're trying to gain weight, is there an ingredient in them that you build too much up of?
Jini Patel Thompson: Twelve is the maximum that you can take because of the vitamin and
Nicole Paull: Jini, would that depend at all on whether we’re talking about an adult or a child as
Jini Patel Thompson: Yes, sorry. Twelve is the maximum for an adult.
Nicole Paull: One more question if anybody would like to present one? {silence} Why don’t
Thank you so much everybody for joining and Jini, it has been a pleasure. Thank you.
Jini Patel Thompson: Thank you so much Nicole.
Female: Yes, I would like to ask a question…
Jini Patel Thompson: Oh okay, go ahead…
Female: My son is 22 years old. He is a senior at college and was diagnosed with severe pan-
ulcerative colitis. Long story short, they put him on Remicade immediately because he did not
have time, they said, to respond to the other drugs. He was pretty bad and they also put him on
Asacol. I started to do research then and I have him on the shakes and the MucosaHeal, the
probiotics, the CoQ10. He was on a lot of that when he was home. He’s away at school now.
Are we wasting our time supplementing this because he is on the Remicade?
Jini Patel Thompson: The Remicade primarily affects the immune system. So no, all of that
stuff is still going to be able to have a beneficial effect even though the drug is wiping out the
immune system. The Absorb Plus obviously is nutrition, just boom into the bloodstream.
Especially if someone is away, rather than them eating pizza, or whatever, that would definitely
be an improvement. The MucosaHeal has a healing action directly on the mucosal lining of the
intestines. With some people, because of the Remicade, all of the inflammation disappears.
With other people, there is a low grade. So that one is hard to say whether it’s needed or not.
Female: And would you do the oregano oil? He’s only on two drugs, not on three drugs. I saw
your book says if you're on three drugs, don’t do it because of the liver.
Jini Patel Thompson: Yes, because it will still knock out some of the pathogens so that when he
does come to a place where he’s ready to wean off the drugs, he is going to have less pathogens
in there to contend with. Because the Remicade and all the drugs, they don’t kill off any
pathogens; they just stop the immune system from fighting the pathogens.
Female: Right, that’s what I was thinking.
Jini Patel Thompson: If anything, the pathogens can flourish. You would definitely want to do
the wild oregano and the probiotics to help keep the gut flora under control. Your only corollary
to that is that often these drugs can change the pH of the gut, so that the probiotics have a very
difficult time living. That’s what I mean about if you're doing a drug with natural, you're often
sabotaging your efforts, because the drug is wrecking the exact same thing we’re trying to heal.
But because it’s unknown, unless you're in severe financial straits, I would say go ahead and do
it. Because odds are, it is having a positive effect. The more you can have, then the better.
Female: Okay. I was hoping that after his senior year of college he would agree to try to get off
the Remicade. We haven't even talked about it because I didn’t want to put too much stress on
Jini Patel Thompson: Often, I mean that’s the thing that drugs are really good for. They're really
good for just getting us through a place where we cannot, or we do not want to take the time and
energy necessary to heal ourselves. Sort of like using a crutch, you know, you can use it for
awhile, but then just keeping in mind that you're going to have more damage to heal when you
finally do decide to go to the natural healing route. But that’s life.
Jini Patel Thompson: Well, because the drugs cause ongoing systemic damage. By the time he
gets off the Remicade, his hormones, his endocrine system, will probably need addressing as
well. It’s all a balancing act. It’s a question of well, if I’m in college and I’m not willing to take
longer to complete my college or I’m not willing to live at home where I need to take … because
natural healing takes quite a bit of work and time. And a college student doesn’t have those
things. They don’t have the support network. Then you’d say you know what; the most
acceptable compromise in his position is use the drugs to get him through and then once he has
graduated, maybe then he is willing to take a year to really, like you said, wean off the drugs and
get some of that foundational healing going.
Female: Will it take at least a year do you think to wean off the drugs?
Jini Patel Thompson: No. The weaning process doesn’t take that long, maybe even just a couple
of months it can take. But then once you’ve weaned off, all of those systems that you’ve been
repressing are going to come roaring back.
Female: And they will come roaring back?
Jini Patel Thompson: Depending on if he’s taking the stuff simultaneously, then maybe he’s not
going to have too many pathogens. Maybe psychologically and emotionally, he’s a very healthy
person, so his immune system can rebound faster. It is so unknown. It may and he may just get
moderately sicker and then he may heal very rapidly. It is totally individual.
Female: I will say your shakes worked wonderfully for him to get his weight back.
Jini Patel Thompson: Oh perfect. They're really good for someone who is in college or
traveling. We have got a number of people whose job takes them on the road a fair amount.
And then for them to have the shakes when they're away from home and they cannot eat healthy
food… I’m not an advocate of anything processed and the shakes are a highly processed food,
but again, this is where you come into the balance between what your reality is and what's
possible. And the bottom line is when you're in a severe disease state or when you can't cook
yourself a home-cooked organic meal, well that is the best thing. Even though you wouldn’t
want to say to anybody to eat Absorb Plus for the rest of your life, no, that would not be healthy.
But in certain situations, it’s the healthiest thing that you can do.
Female: Right. Okay. Would you recommend – I don’t know if he would be willing – but
Female: That was my question. Thank you very much
Nicole Paull: Okay, I think that is all we have time for. Thank you everyone for attending and
Jini Patel Thompson: You are very welcome and good night to everybody.

Adaptogenic Tonics: an approach unique to herbal medicine Guido Masé RH(AHG) guido@grianherbs.com www.grianherbs.com aradicle.blogspot.com (802) 229-5895 Background, stress physiology, vital energies of the human system An “adaptogenic” herb helps the human system to adapt, or respond, to demanding and stressful situations. Traditionally, these plants have been used to norm